If you’re a union member, don’t forget that this is the season that unions wrap up their end-of-year credit card summaries, which detail every expense they’ve paid out.
You have a right to see that document. This is the best tool you have as an individual member to stop fraud and misappropriation.
Every year, union workers somewhere in the country receive a belated, sheepish email with a demoralizing announcement: There’s been a financial scandal among their leadership.
Connecticut is an expensive place to live. As a member of my town’s Affordable Housing Commission, I have discovered that affordable housing law, metrics and data used by the state are myth, not reality. For example, to be counted as affordable, housing must have been constructed after 1990. Thus, the apartment that my neighbor rents for $1,100 per month to a local teacher is not counted.
Ernest Lee Jahncke was one of three Americans serving as members of the International Olympic Committee. IOC President Count Henri de Baillet-Latour implored Jahncke to “convince your people that the IOC has upheld the rights of everyone concerned and that the the unanimous decision [to stage the games in Berlin] was the only wise one.” Jahncke replied, in effect, don’t give me this bull about the Olympic ideals of founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin, because “precisely [his – de Coubertin’s] devotion to this idea has caused me to do just the opposite of what you so confidently ask of me. ..[I will] do all I can to persuade my fellow Americans that they ought not to take part in the Games if they are held in Nazi Germany” and that the Nazis “are continuing to violate every requirement of fair play in the conduct of sport” and that no foreign nation could participate in the Nazi games “without at least acquiescing in the contempt of the Nazis for fair play and their sordid exploitation of the Games.”
Strong stuff. And the right stuff. But it’s the kind of stuff that gets you fired. That’s what happened to Jahncke. The IOC’s 35th Congress came in July of 1936. Rudolf Hess welcomed the delegates on behalf of the Führer. Baillet-Latour complimented himself for “keeping religion and politics out of the games.” And the IOC unanimously approved a motion that Ernest Lee Jahncke, the only American IOC member who criticized the Nazi games, be summarily expelled.
Preface by The Red Line: In a smart and forthright manner, Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo has written an op-ed in the fashion of a report card on progress in his town during his first year in office.
In essence an open letter, Camillo's op-ed shows due respect to the citizenry, by whom he was elected to manage the town's affairs. Other local leaders should follow his lead and his manner.
● Read Camillo's Op-Ed in Greenwich Patch
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Read, and comment on, Camillo's Op-Ed here on The Red Line
The residents of this state are tapped out. Adding another tax on top of all the other taxes we pay will do more harm than good. The TCI tax will take over $100 million per year out of Connecticut drivers’ pockets to appease a group of climate activists. The truth is that this initiative will do nothing to actually change the climate of the Earth and to think it will is foolish.
The new year will bring another round of wage increases for state employees and a new payroll tax for everyone else, and House Republicans are calling on Gov. Ned Lamont to suspend both in light of the pandemic.
Q;"Can I take time off if it's a friend and not a family member who is sick?"
A: "We do have a very expansive definition of family, meaning it could be people who are close to you but might not be related. What most people are concerned about is this definition of close affinity, and we are working hard to narrow that definition while still leaving it flexible enough to allow people to care for people who are close to them."
If you earn $40,000/year you'll pay $200 into the system and for that modest sum you get 12 weeks of paid time off at 95% of salary [$9,230],
In our time and place, nothing lends more authority to a field than calling it a science. Polling has particularly benefited from the rigor implied by its association with the true science of statistics, and its jargon of sample sizes, margins of error and the like. But faulty data defies the most stringent analysis, and that fact has undermined opinion surveys.
These data point to a distinct threat to Connecticut’s economic health. Personnel costs have to be part of the solution. July 1 will mark the expiration of the 10-year no-layoff guarantee for unionized state employees. The governor can use the mere threat of layoffs to secure meaningful concessions. What Gov. Lamont and legislators do to confront these problems will tell whether they are true leaders or mere servants of their benefactors in Big Public Labor.
Student loan debt is huge, estimated at $1.6 trillion, and five Connecticut colleges were cited last week by the U.S. Education Department for leaving the parents of their students with especially high debt. Many are the horror stories about borrowers who won't be able to repay.
Relief for certain debtors may be in order, but then what of the students who sacrificed along with their parents to pay their own way through college?
Student loan debt relief should not be resolved without investigation.
One can get a high school diploma in Connecticut without having learned anything since kindergarten and can earn a degree from a public college without having learned much more, public college being to a great extent just remedial high school.
